laundromat

This is just a short essay on our laundromat. I was reading Slaughterhouse Five while sitting in the parking lot of it this morning.

There is Laundromat near our house; it’s only a few minutes away. There are several in our neighborhood, I guess that’s because of where we live. There are a lot of rental properties and small apartments and apparently a lot of them don’t have washers and driers. Our house has neither a washer nor a drier, there is hookups in a small utility room though but I am not sure how one would ever fit a washer or drier in there. It’s so small you wouldn’t be able to them get through the doorway. I wonder about that.

I guess Jennifer or I visit the Laundromat about once a week, it’s just the two of us so we don’t have to be constantly doing wash like other people. Sometimes we go there together but mostly it’s one or the other dropping off laundry or picking it up. We started out folding clothes there but because it’s so close to our house we just load the hot clothes into our car and fold them while sitting on our own couch, it’s better that way.

Sometimes when you go there you are the only white person with the exception of the workers, they all seem to be white. The people there are mostly Hispanic, some are Asian though but our neighborhood has a lot of Hispanic people in it so it’s mostly Mexican people. I don’t have a problem calling them Mexicans because I think most of them are actually from Mexico originally, they are almost always friendly to me though sometimes I hold the door open for them and they do not say thank you. Do they think I won’t understand the word gracias?  I know a little Spanish; I can say some very basic phrases and a few dirty slangs. I don’t like rude people so I give them the benefit of the doubt. A lot of the time they smile or smile with their eyes, sometimes they hold the door for me. I say Thank you and expect that they understand it.

Often there are kids running around in the Laundromat, mostly toddlers. There are some video games so they beg quarters off their parents to try to grab prizes out of the crane game. It seems like there are a lot of Mexican men there with their wives and almost always their kids. It’s nice that they help out with laundry, I don’t see a lot of guys my age there so I suppose they make their wives do it alone?

I’ve never felt scared there, it’s a very nice building and they take very good care of the machines. I am sure they sweep up and wipe the tops of the washers down at least ten times a day. I see them do it almost every time I am there and I am only there for an hour. The people who work there are all very nice, they serve free coffee if you are washing clothes. It’s a nice touch; things like that make the place stand out. That’s why we go there. Un-manned Laundromats scare the s**t out of me, they are dirty and there are scary people there. I used to work next to one in Sturgeon Bay; it got broken into at least four times while I lived there. They never caught the people who did it. It’s a coffee shop now. It’s very nice.

Jennifer’s dad told us a story once. Jen’s mom was sick in the hospital and her dad had some laundry to do so he took it along while he visited her. Afterwards he stopped at a Laundromat that was un-manned. It’s a very dirty and scary Laundromat and we would have told him so if we’d had the chance. He got a bunch of quarters and I forget the exact circumstances but he dropped them and they rolled all over the floor. There was a man there cleaning up and Don asked if he could borrow a broom to sweep up his quarters. The guy looked him right in the eyes and simply said “no”, Don said he was so shocked he didn’t know what to do. So he knelt down and picked up his quarters one by one. Jen’s dad is a tough man. I am sure it’s one of those encounters where you wake up the morning after mad as hell with a whole bunch of scenarios you would have preferred running around in your mind. I went there once, it scared the hell out of me. I prefer our Laundromat.

Author's Note

I wrote this in like forty minutes, I don't know why. Just for fun I guess.

Reviews

[Samuel Dickens]

Even though it might not be a proper "story," it still held my interest, probably because I used to go to laundromats too. As far as I can tell, none of "Slaughterhouse Five" spilled over into it. Your writing style is clear and easy to follow--I like that.